Scholar reveals Abe Lincoln's in-laws

CHICO — If Abraham Lincoln's in-laws were alive today, "they would probably be throwing chairs at each other on the Jerry Springer show," according to a visiting professor at Chico State University.

Stephen Berry, assistant professor of history at the University of Georgia, told a Chico State audience Wednesday night that the Todd family, which Lincoln joined on Nov. 3, 1842, when he married Mary Todd, "really weren't likable" people.

Berry was on campus to offer the annual Joanna Dunlap Cowden Memorial Lecture, and the focus of his talk came from his newly published book, "House of Abraham: Lincoln, the Todds, and the National Family."

Mary Todd Lincoln was one of 14 children, born into a prominent Kentucky family, and the professor said the Todds were a classic example of the impact the Civil War had in that state.

Berry said that in Kentucky, the Civil War was truly a brother-versus- brother conflict. Eight of Mary Todd's siblings sided with the Confederacy, while six others were on the Union side.

This division, Berry suggested, had a material impact on the way Lincoln viewed the war.

Lincoln, according to Berry, had no real contact with the shooting side of the war. He never was a soldier himself in a real conflict. He never witnessed a battle, and so, the professor maintained, Lincoln never developed a close connection to the troops.

Berry said Lincoln did meet with many individuals who lost family members in the horrendous conflict. Those experiences, along with his connection to the Todds, gave the president a visceral understanding of the losses a family suffered.

Berry pointed to three members of the Todd family who he believes had a special impact on the president.

First there was Mary. Berry said it is generally accepted that Mary Todd Lincoln was bipolar and reacted to both the manic and the depressive phases by spending lavishly, buying the "pretty things that don't die."

The professor said the first lady spent in one week the $20,000 she was supposed to use over four years for White House purchases and renovation. She also allegedly leaked documents to the press, took bribes to help would-be office seekers, and cooked the White House books, pocketing funds that were supposed to go to domestic needs.

Her brother, David Todd, was appointed commandant of the first Confederate prisoner of war camp in Richmond, Va. He allegedly encouraged guards to shoot prisoners who stuck their heads out of upstairs windows, and was removed from his post after kicking the corpse of a Union soldier out into the street.

The third Todd Berry mentioned was beautiful Emilie Todd Helm. Lincoln offered her husband, Ben Hardin Helm, a position in the Union army, which Helm declined. Helm went on to become a general in the Confederate army and was killed in 1863 in the Battle of Chickamauga.

Lincoln gave his sister-in-law, who according to Berry he always called "Little Sister," a pass to cross Union lines and even hosted her for a time in the White House. She eventually returned to Kentucky and in a letter demanding the president provide her some special help, wrote, "I also would remind you that your minié bullets have made us what we are."

Berry said Lincoln had a wife who was the focus of scandal, a brother-in-law who was reviled for kicking Union dead, and a sister-in-law who blamed him personally for the horrors of the Civil War.

All of these elements, according to Berry, led Lincoln to view the war in terms of a torn and ravaged national family that had to come together to bind mutual wounds to survive.

Staff writer Roger H. Aylworth can be reached at 896-7762 or raylworth@chicoer.com.